Ch-Ch-Ch Changing Librarian

Website Evaluation: Real Life Examples

2009-10-29T16:04:00.008-05:00

Librarians can preach about the importance of website evaluation, but does it "click" with the students?

If your students happen to follow current events and/or sports, using this example may spark some interest.

Yesterday, there was a fact checking fiasco in the social networking AND news world.

It all started when someone updated their Myspace page. This person stated that Orlando Thomas, former NFL (Vikings) player, had lost his battle with Lou Gehrig's Disease.

From there, the word traveled to the University of Louisiana at Lafayette. The University felt that it was important to notify the Minnesota Vikings (his former NFL team).

The Vikings then posted information on their webpage about honoring the life of Orlando Thomas at the next home game.

The Minneapolis Star Tribune then published an article on the topic.

ESPN and Sports Illustrated followed with articles about Thomas' death.

Wikipedia was edited to list Orlando Thomas' date of death (October 28, 2009). *I saw it. It has since been corrected. I should have taken a screen shot.

Then, the same mess that began with Social Networking ended with Social Networking. A former NFL player, Jake Reed tweeted that Orlando was alive.

This tangled mess and failure to fact check and evaluate websites is horribly sad, but it a teachable moment to inform students about the risks of using inaccurate information from sources that lack authority. This really blurs the line between sources of News v. The National Enquirer or TMZ.

I used these PowerPoint slides today in a library instruction session for a Principles of Marketing class to show the importance of fact checking and evaluating websites.

News articles after corrections were made:
Star Tribune: Vikings' Website Report Citing Thomas' Death Was Incorrect

ESPN: Thomas Still Battling ALS

More Google Tricks: Population, time, weather

2009-10-28T13:33:00.004-05:00

Here are some more tricks that I discovered with Google. You can find the population by just typing the word Population and the name of the state or county.

Maybe you are traveling and confused about time zones. If so, you can type time and a the name of the city or state, Google will list the current time.

There are multiple websites and news sources that give the weather, but did you know that you could also get the weather in a Google search? Isn't that cool? Just type weather and the name of the city.

Government document of the month

2009-10-27T15:25:00.005-05:00

I chose Theodore Roosevelt and the Dakota Badlands to be the Government Document for the month of October. Click here for item location.

Appreciation of the National Parks has been given more attention thanks to Ken Burns' film The National Parks: America's Best Idea. The CSB/SJU library owns the DVD set. Click here for the location information.

Google tricks: Unemployment rate, calculator, conversions,..

2009-10-27T09:05:00.009-05:00

I have plugged Google's Uncle Sam feature in the past for researching government information, but there are some other Google features that are really neat. @thenweagree alerted me to the fact that you can type unemployment rate and a county name in the Google search box to get charted data on the unemployment rate of your county.

Also, I commonly use the Google search box as a calculator. You can simply type the math problem into the search box to get an answer.

Google can also be used for conversions. If you are traveling to the United Kingdom, you may want to know the conversion rate from U.S. Dollars to Pounds.

I buy my hot sauce in bulk. I love spicy food. So, when my recipe called for one 2 oz. bottle of hot sauce, I wasn't sure about how much that would be in terms of my measuring cups.

For previous posts on other tricks of Google, click here.

It's October 12th, and it's SNOWING.

2009-10-12T09:31:00.008-05:00

This photo is from my commute to work. The early snow made me wonder about books and government resources for weather and climate.

Online Government Resources:
1. National Operational Hydrologic Remote Sensing Center: National Snow Analyses
2 . Natural Resources Conservation Service: SNOTEL Data & Products
3. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration: Recent Snowfall and Snow Depth Maps
4 . Minnesota Department of Public Safety: Snowplow Safety

Government Documents:
1. Poor Richard improved : being an almanack and ephemeris of the motions of the sun and moon; the true places and aspects of the planets; the rising and setting of the sun, and the rising, setting and southing of the moon, for the year of our Lord 1758: being the second after leap-year ... / By Richard Saunders, philom. [pseud]. Author: Benjamin Franklin.
2. Road weather management [microform] : highlights of the Federal program.
3. Hourly precipitation data. Minnesota / U.S. Dept. of Commerce, Weather Bureau.
4. Climatological data. Minnesota [microform].

P.S. I do not recommend taking photos while you're driving. It's dangerous, and those pesky windshield wipers get in the way... :)

Breast Cancer Awareness Month

2009-10-07T12:47:00.004-05:00

Here are some government and library resources that I recommend for studying or staying informed about Breast Cancer.

Government resources:
1. National Institutes of Health: Breast Cancer
2. Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality: Breast Cancer
3. National Human Genone Research Institute: Learning About Breast Cancer
4. MedlinePlus: Breast Cancer
5. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention: Breast Cancer
6. N ational Cancer Institute: Breast Cancer Screening and Testing
7. Impact of gene expression profiling tests on breast cancer outcomes / prepared by the Johns Hopkins University
8. Antiperspirants/deodorants and breast cancer (from Cancer.gov)
Breast Cancer and Environmental Research Act of 2008
9. Addressing the screening gap : the National Breast and Cervical Cancer Early Detection Program : hearing before the Committee on Oversight and Government Reform

Books:
1. No family history : the environmental links to breast cancer / Sabrina McCormick.
2. After the cure : the untold stories of breast cancer survivors / Emily K. Abel and Saskia Subramanian
3. The 10 best questions for surviving breast cancer : the script you need to take control of your health / Dede Bonner
4. The breast cancer book : what you need to know to make informed decisions / Ruth H. Grobstein.

Not so typical blog post

2009-10-05T16:15:00.002-05:00

This blog is ALWAYS about higher education and/or libraries.

I just have to cheat.

Just once.

Check out this FANATIC family.

(me, my fabulous sister Lindsey, Dad, Mom)

Are you familiar with the Armenian Genocide?

2009-10-02T16:11:00.003-05:00

There are many quality web resources on this horrific moment in history. This event in history faces many accusations of being a hoax, similar to Holocaust deniers. You decide.

Websites:
Professional Ethics and the Denial of Armenian Genocide
Armenian Genocide Cannot Be Denied
Princeton Is Accused of Fronting For the Turkish Government
The Armenian Genocide Resolution Unanimously Passed By The Association of Genocide Scholars of North America
AFFIRMATION OF THE UNITED STATES RECORD ON THE ARMENIAN GENOCIDE RESOLUTION

Books:
Children of Armenia : a forgotten genocide and the century-long struggle for justice / Michael Bobelian.
A shameful act : the Armenian genocide and the question of Turkish responsibility / Taner Akçam ; translated by Paul Bessemer.
The Armenian massacres in Ottoman Turkey : a disputed genocide / Guenter Lewy.
Is the Holocaust unique? : perspectives on comparative genocide / edited and with an introduction by Alan S. Rosenbaum ; with a foreword by Israel W. Charny.

Did you know that parts of the 1890 Census were destroyed in a fire?

2009-09-29T18:58:00.005-05:00

The fire occured in 1921 in the basement of the Commerce Building in Washington, D.C. Some documents were destroyed by the flames, and some documents were damaged by water and smoke. The fire prompted some individuals to push for better facilities for National Archives.

Some parts of the census were saved. According to the U.S. National Archives, they included:
The general population census schedules
Schedules of Union Civil War Veterans or their widows
Oklahoma territorial schedules
A list of selected Delaware African-Americans
Statistics of Lutheran congregations
Statistical information for the entire United States

For more information on this topic, please consult these resources:
The National Archives: The 1890 Census
"'First in the Path of the Firemen:' The Fate of the 1890 Population Census," Prologue: Quarterly of the National Archives, Vol. 28, No. 1, pp. 64-81 (Spring 1996), Part 1 and Part 2.
Census.gov: United States’ Population and Census Cost
Eleventh Census of the United States, 1890. M407. 3 rolls

Read Dating

2009-09-21T10:51:00.003-05:00

I would like to host a Read Dating event for students at one of the St. John's/St. Ben's libraries. I think that the phrase "read dating" was coined by the University Bookstore in Seattle, WA. For more information, click here. I have read several articles on public libraries hosting similar events, but I haven't found information on academic libraries sponsoring these events.

The Minnesota Library Association is sponsoring a Read Dating event. The venue is a restaurant in Minneapolis. Participants will be mingling while inquiring about various questions that are pre-written by the organizers. Participants draw for the questions. Also, participants are required to bring a book they "love, hate, have recently read, or just want to talk about."

Do you think college students would attend an event like this?

September is...

2009-09-08T15:10:00.004-05:00

.. YOGA month!
According to the The Royal Society of Medicine Health Encyclopedia, the word "yoga" is Sanskrit for ‘yoking, as of oxen,' which signifies union ("Yoga," 2000).

The College of St. Benedict and St. John's University both have books on Yoga in their collections. So, if you cannot afford a gym membership in these tough economic times, try to learn these yoga poses in your dorm room. Click on the book covers to see catalog and location information.

This book takes a look at the spiritual aspects of Management. One chapter is called Will-to-yoga, ego and leadership : research or realization?

This book explains the background, philosophy, and traditions of Yoga.

Are you interested in working in health care or geriatrics? This book has an introduction the benefits of Yoga.

References

Yoga. (2000). In The Royal Society of Medicine Health Encyclopedia. Retrieved from http://www.credoreference.com/entry/rsmhealth/yoga

Change Extravaganza!

2009-09-02T08:39:00.003-05:00

I have prompted and experienced a lot of change recently, and that is why I have not been able to post very often to this blog (I apologize to faithful readers). This will change. I will be posting more regularly going forward.

On Monday, August 24th I started a new position at a different institution of higher education. I am now employed by the College of St. Benedict/St. John's University as a Government and Business Information Librarian. I will be the liaison for the following departments: Management, Economics, Accounting and Finance. More information on the position is available here. I am really looking forward to the collaboration with these departments, and I already feel very encouraged by their enthusiasm for information literacy instruction in the classroom.

I have been doing a lot of training on various things in the past week, and I'm looking forward to diving right in with instruction. I am leading a workshop for an FYS (First-Year Seminar) class this Friday.

Although my liaison partnerships and instruction opportunities are a main part of my job, I am also responsible for the government depository at St. John's University. I have some familiarity with government documents, and I am very passionate about government information and accessibility. It will be interesting to see the changes in government depositories considering that much of the printed information is dually accessible online via the government's commitment to provide free public access of U.S. government information. I am brainstorming ways to get the students to see the value of using government resources as part of their research process. To ease the transition of adjusting to the world of government documents, I will be attending the Fall Federal Depository Library Conference in D.C. this October. I am looking forward to hearing the perspective of other academic librarians concerned about the future of government depositories.

Taking this new position required that I move to a new city. The commute would have been about 1 hour and 40 minutes. I realized that this was not doable. So, I'm adjusting to a new community. I do not have my cable or internet installed (yet!). So, that explains the lack of blogging, Facebook status updates, and tweeting.

Look for more exciting updates in the future. I'm renewing my commitment to blogging about the exciting changes in the future of libraries!

Librarian Assisted Twitter Assignment in the Classroom

2009-07-22T12:00:00.007-05:00

One of our accounting instructors requested that I help her class become acclimated to Twitter through one of their assignments.

She created an assignment where the class would be debating the ethics of employers judging current and prospective employees based on their social media content. The class is Payroll Accounting, and they are studying this topic from an HR standpoint. The assignment is a great fit for helping the students understand that their online content is easily search-able and accessible, as well as learning the benefits of using social media.

The two sides of the debate are:

Yes - #yessn Yes, it is ethical for employers to judge an employee by their social networking content

No - #nosn No, it is not ethical for employers to judge an employee by their social networking content

I taught the students the basics of using Twitter, the different privacy settings, how to use #hashtags, how to shorten links, and how to search Twitter using http://search.twitter.com/ or following hyperlinked #hashtags as shown below.

Students are asked to tweet from their standpoint in the debate by posting comments and links to different resources. I talked about how their next step is to conduct research and find material to incorporate into the tweets. Researching and sharing information ties into my role as the librarian. The students must tweet four times per week for four weeks. Students are also required to reply directly to their classmates in at least three tweets per week.

I look forward to hearing how other librarians are collaborating with faculty and implementing Twitter and other Social Media in daily instruction.

50 Ways to Increase Your Chances for an “A” Research Paper

2009-07-03T10:18:00.001-05:00

I am writing for http://www.rasmussen.edu/articles/

Check it out...

50 Ways to Increase Your Chances for an “A” Research Paper

Educational uses of Social Networking and Microblogging

2009-06-30T11:28:00.005-05:00

I recently gave a presentation to our faculty on the educational uses of Social Networking and Microblogging. Some faculty members had some experience dabbling in the various tools, but some were brand new to the ideas. I created a PowerPoint explaining:
Facebook.com
Linkedin.com
Myspace.com
Twitter.com

I shared some videos, and I found that this video on how a professor uses Twitter in the classroom was the most intriguing for faculty members.

I made the PowerPoint slides from my presentation available on SlideShare.

After the presentation, a faculty member approached me about collaborating next quarter in a project to get her students more involved in using Twitter for sharing links on a group project that will develop into a debate with two teams using different hashtags. I will keep you updated on the progress of this experiment.

*A special thanks to Cindy Bassett for sharing her experiences with presenting on Twitter to faculty. Twitter was a great tool for getting ideas on what educators need to know about social media.

Jing

2009-06-30T11:00:00.005-05:00

Are you using Jing? It's really easy and FREE. You can capture images or videos for tutorials. I was able to make this video. It was my first attempt. Then, I attempted practicing with sound.

I think this tool will be most useful in chat or email reference interviews when you reach a dead end. Usually, I take screen shots and create a word document guide for students. Then, I have to attach it via email. Now, if I am on chat reference (Meebo), I will be able to just paste the URL.

Marketing Workshops - Follow up

2009-05-26T11:53:00.006-05:00

I wrote a blog post in February that showed an image of the form that I use to determine which marketing strategies are attracting more students to my information literacy workshops.

The results are in. I tabulated the results of my May 14th "Clean Off Your Google Goggles" workshop. This shows how important faculty/librarian collaboration truly is! I am very grateful for my awesome faculty.

The question is "How did you find out about this workshop?"

Visual Learners

2009-05-26T11:32:00.005-05:00

We know that many of our students are visual learners. Here are some websites that are awesome for instruction purposes as well as suggestions for students outside of the classroom.

The Virtual Body is a great website to recommend for students taking classes in Anatomy and Physiology.

The Merriam-Webster Visual Dictionary is a dictionary that would be helpful for visual learners as well as ELL and ESL students.

Free audio and video at Learn Out Loud
We know that audio and video can spice up a lecture. This website has a lot to offer. I personally liked what was available in the Business and Economics section.

Check out these resources. Let me know what you think. Do you have other suggestions to add to this list?

Plagiarism in the movies...

2009-05-18T09:19:00.005-05:00

Students often view the topic of plagiarism as boring or intimidating.

I wanted to spice up my library instruction. So, last week before I taught my students about paraphrasing/summarizing/quoting and citation styles, I showed this video clip from Good Will Hunting. From watching this clip, I was able to get the students to make an emotional connection to plagiarism. We discussed which characters in this clip ended up looking foolish and unoriginal vs. very intelligent and able to integrate their own voice. We know that making emotional connections helps with memorization and information retrieval.

Do you have any suggestions for other video clips that could be shown on this topic?

Holocaust Remembrance Day Resources

2009-04-21T09:59:00.003-05:00

In honor of Holocaust Remembrance Day, here are some Holocaust resources that can be accessed through the Rasmussen College - Eagan Campus Library. Click on each image to find the call #.

Recommended websites on the Holocaust:
United States Holocaust Memorial Museum
Cybrary of the Holocaust: Remember.org
Memorial and Museum: Auschwitz-Birkenau
Anne Frank Center
Stories of Survival: Children of the Holocaust

I also just finished reading a great piece of historical fiction by Jenna Blum called Those Who Save Us. This item can be borrowed from the Rasmussen College - Aurora Campus Library.

org

2009-04-08T13:03:00.004-05:00

I was falsely under the impression that there were requirements to register a .org web address. It was part of my routine when teaching students about web extensions. According to Wikipedia, there are no requirements for registering a .org. This image is a screen shot from Wikipedia.

Generic top-level domain. (2009, April 7). Wikipedia. Retrieved April 8, 2009, from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/generic_top-level_domain.

.org. (2009, March 25). Wikipedia. Retrieved April 8, 2009, from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki.org.

Top Librarian Tweeters

2009-03-30T16:13:00.005-05:00

I noticed today that I was ranked as a top tweeting librarian. View the full list here.

I think some people avoid Twitter because they worry about the time committment. I have found that this hasn't been an issue at all. The nature of Twitter is so fast. Posting "tweets" is quick and easy. The time that you dedicate to reading other people's tweets if really up to you. If you miss someone's tweets and/or fall behind, it is not a catastrophe. If someone would like to respond to you directly, they can click the reply arrow. Then, you could log in to view only the response posts as shown below.

I use Twitter for a number of reasons.

1. To stay informed about library and publishing trends.
2. To stay current about search engines, helpful websites, new book titles, mediums (Kindle, Skype), etc.
3. To network with fellow educators.
4. For quick ideas when brainstorming. I often times throw out a question, and I have gotten awesome responses to my inquiries.

To view my tweets, click here.

Join and follow me!

In the beginning...

2009-03-24T13:36:00.003-05:00

When I was in elementary school, I wanted to be a mailman.

Other students selected baseball player, ballerina, or actress. My goals were more realistic. I liked the routine of watching the mailman(person) come to our house at the same time everyday to deliver valuable information. There was so much consistency. I loved the anticipation of waiting to see if I received a letter or card. My first fascination/trauma with mail delivery was when our house was under strict orders to keep our dog inside the house because our mutt dog, Chico, bit our mailman. Chico was a very cranky, old dog that loved to wander aimlessly through the neighborhood.

I arrived at Gustavus Adolphus College in 2000. I was most certainly a financial aid candidate, and I had agreed to do work-study on campus. Being assigned to the Gustavus Post Office was obviously FATE!

My duties were to stuff mail in the student, faculty, and staff mailboxes as well as sell stamps, etc. I loved the transaction. I often times ended up stuffing my own mail. My mom and grandmas were excellent with mailing letters and cards. I will be forever grateful for their kindness.

I think that my love for mail delivery helped develop my passion for libraries. Primarily, it is the transaction. It is the transfer and the delivery of essential information-- with the exception of spam mail. As a librarian, I assist students with this transaction everyday through reference interview of various mediums. This exchange is essential for students and librarians. It's the delivery of an information need. I am grateful to work in a field where this transaction of information exists. I am also grateful that I work in a field where I am not getting bit by cranky, old mutts.

Skype for Reference Questions?

2009-03-10T08:36:00.002-05:00

I think this is a really cool idea. Skype is used for free video calls.

This video was found here.

Been to the Minnesota History Center lately?

2009-03-09T13:02:00.001-05:00